Netscape, Aurum ease selling over Net

Netscape Communications and Aurum Software will team up today at the Field and Sales Force Automation Show in San Jose, California, to make it easier for companies to generate sales leads directly from the Internet.

Under the partnership, Aurum will bundle Netscape Navigator and Web server software with its SalesTrack sales analysis software and WebTrak Internet Marketing Module, a client/server application that links a company's home page into back-end databases. With the combination, a company can put an HTML form on its home page for customers to fill out. The information then goes back to the company for follow-up by salespeople or telemarketers.

Netscape will be among the first customers for the new system when it announces tomorrow that it will use the SalesTrack system for its own General Store, a portion of its Web site devoted to selling software over the Net.

"We see [this partnership] as a great opportunity to extend the way we do sales and telemarketing over the Internet," said Mary Coleman, president and CEO of Aurum.

Coleman added that the Netscape site will provide a good test case. "There are 40 million hits a day on Netscape's Web site. It's a very high-production environment for our software," said Coleman.